Editor’s note: This is the eighth in our Arena Flashback series, stories looking back at memorable moments in Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena history. The building that opened in 1958 will be demolished in May to make way for a new $93 million expo center.

Johnny Cash played Brown County Veterans Memorial at least four times in the ’70s, but it was front-page news when “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash” echoed through the building in 1972.

A sold-out crowd of 5,859 paid as much as $6.50 a ticket to see what the Green Bay Press-Gazette called “one of the biggest events in popular entertainment in many a year.”

A 40-year-old Cash was already a superstar with hits “Sunday Morning Comin’ Down,” “Folsom Prison Blues” and “A Boy Named Sue” and his own TV show, but he came to Green Bay with a busload of guests that, in retrospect, reads like a country music history lesson.

His wife of four years, June Carter Cash, was there to sing “Jackson” and “If I Had a Hammer” with him.

June’s mother, Maybelle Carter, inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame two years earlier, was on autoharp for her performance with the Carter Family, which also included daughters, Anita and Helen.

Rockabilly pioneer Carl Perkins, who wrote “Blue Suede Shoes” for Elvis Presley, was there. So was singer-songwriter and Folsom Prison ex-convict Glen Sherley, The Tennessee Three and The Statler Brothers, whose song, “Do You Remember These,” was No. 1 at the time.

Johnny Cash at the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena on Feb. 25, 1972.(Photo: Courtesy of Neville Public Museum of Brown County)

It was nearly three hours of music that closed with all of the artists onstage together for two gospel songs from Cash’s 1973 film, “Gospel Road: A Story of Jesus.”

But it was the relatability of Cash, a man who battled his share of demons and sang many a troubled song, that shone the brightest, as he tossed harmonicas to the crowd and shook hands with fans near the stage,

“Many look at him as a hero, and what makes him a hero to them is he’s not perfect and he has changed the course of his life. He rebounded from the days when his pockets were filled with pills — upper or downers or whatever — to become a man of religion and love. And his concert came off as the joy of rejuvenation,” Warren Gerds wrote in a review of the show.

Cash set an arena record that night for the highest gross receipts for a single performance: $32,254. Of that total, the venue, in its 14th year, received $750 for the rental fee and a percentage of the concessions.

After the standing ovation that ended the night, he was whisked away in limousine — a rare show of celebrity for an artist who ranked among the most unassuming Vicky Van Matre ever encountered in her 31 years working at the arena, the majority of them as assistant director.

“Johnny Cash was by far the easiest person to work with as far as his demands and his performance rider,” she said. “All he wanted was a stool, a microphone and a glass of water. That was it, honest to God. That was his whole rider.”

Contact Kendra Meinert at 920-431-8347 or kmeinert@greenbay.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KendraMeinert.